Joe Dope camouflaged his Garand is a 1942 three-panel Ordnance Department cartoon signed by Pvt. Will Eisner. Joe Dope buries his rifle in sand, it fails to fire, and caricatured German soldiers take him prisoner, under the tag "Don't be a dope!" (NAID 514701).
What the sheet prints
Content note: the German soldiers are drawn as grotesque caricatures. The archive's content note says so.
The archive describes three panels. Joe Dope buries his Garand rifle in sand. The gun fails to fire. German soldiers take him prisoner behind barbed wire. A five-line limerick tells the story, and the sheet closes on a tag and an instruction.
Joe Dope camouflaged his Garand
By burying it deep in the sand;
He leapt from the mire,
But the gun wouldn't fire_
So the Nazis took Joseph in hand!
Don't be a dope!
HANDLE EQUIPMENT RIGHT
[signature: PVT. Will Eisner, ABERDEEN PVG. GDS.]
[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1942-O-478615
[imprint:] ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT, U. S. ARMY
Who made it
The imprint names the Ordnance Department of the U.S. Army, and the Government Printing Office number dates the printing to 1942. The signature reads "PVT. Will Eisner," followed by "ABERDEEN PVG. GDS." The archive records the audience as the Army's own forces and the purpose as warning or informing. The archive's own summary calls it a cartoon drawn for soldiers, on rifle care. The National Archives holds it with the World War II posters; the record gives no print run.
How to read it
Name-calling and fear appeal are the tags. The name-calling is aimed at the American soldier, not the enemy: "Don't be a dope!" The fear is capture. The lesson itself is ordinary maintenance. A rifle buried in sand will not fire, and the sheet wants every soldier to know it.
The sheet treats its readers as adults who can laugh at a fool and take the point. It does not threaten them with punishment or invoke a law. It mocks a made-up private so that a real one keeps his weapon clean. The caricatured captors are the weakest part, and the verse would have worked without them.
The Ordnance Department also issued They're Closer Than You Think! the same year, with a machinist at his lathe instead of a soldier. Another Army series that trained by mockery, Benny the Bungler, appears on this site as Are You Like Benny? The anti-Nazi propaganda hub collects the German-enemy sheets.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Joe Dope camouflaged his Garand, 1942. Ordnance Department, U.S. Army; artist Will Eisner.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1143H, NAID 514701, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
